Lee Bolman -- Author, teacher

Welcome!

As a teacher, author and speaker, my goal is to help managers
and leaders get a better handle on what's going on, see more
possibilities, and achieve the goals they care about.

The links at the top of the page will take
you in the general directions people most often want to go. The
sidebar on the right provides a quicker way to get to specific
localities if you know what you're looking for. If
you don't find what you want, click on the "Contact"
button at the top of the page, and send me an email.

What shape is your kite?

A basic message in our work on reframing is
the importance of knowing yourself and the frames you use to make sense
of your world. Your "kite" provides a visual image of your
relative emphasis on structure, people, politics and
culture/symbols. For a quick and provocative look
in the mirror,
take the free online
Leadership Orientations Inventory.The
paper and pencil version, which you can score yourself,
includes a diagram that lets you chart your own kite.

How Great Leaders Think: the Art of
Reframing

Our latest book, How
Great Leaders Think: the Art of Reframing, is out and
available in print, digital and audio book formats at
Amazon,
Barnes & Noble, etc.. It has a simple message:

§ Good
thinking is the starting point for good leadership.

§ Leaders who
can reframe—look at the same thing from multiple
perspectives—think better. They create a lucid portrait of
what’s going on around them and have a clearer vision of what’s
needed to achieve desired results.

§ Leaders can
see and do more when they know how to negotiate four key areas
of the leadership terrain: structural, human resource,
political, and symbolic.

The book answers a request we’ve often heard from readers and
fans of our work for a shorter, more applied version of
Reframing Organizations. This new work is a compact overview
of our ideas about reframing and our four-frame model, with a
focus on leadership. Because storytelling is often the best form
of teaching, we use cases and examples, many of them from iconic
leaders, to provide realistic lessons about how great leaders
think and act.

Thoughtful reviews of the book include
Harvey Schachter's for The Globe and Mail
(click here), and Michael Sales' take
here.

A Primer on Reframing

After a conversation
with Lee, Gwen Moran wrote an excellent
brief article on reframing as a
versatile tool for finding productive ways to rethink life's frustrations and snares. It's on Fast Company's website:
5 Ways
to Think About Negative Life Events.

Reframing Organizations, 5th edition

The fifth edition of
Reframing Organizations
is available in paperback,hardcover and digital
editions at major booksellers.
The four frames remain the heart of the book, and the chapter
structure is the same as in the 4th edition, but we've edited
and added new cases and research throughout to capture the state
of knowledge and practice about organizations and leadership in
2013. The frames help in understanding, for example, why
Steve Jobs needed to fail before he could succeed, and how Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Howard Schultz (Starbucks) can share an
obsession with perfecting the customer experience despite very
different ideas on how to achieve that goal. There's a
new online frames instrument, and a
new video
in which Terry Deal and I talk about the 5th edition.

Leading with Soul, 3rd edition

The third edition of
Leading with Soul
came out in August, 2012. Terry Deal and I explored the book's
timeless spiritual message in the context of a
different world than we lived in when the previous edition
was published in 2001. We've updated to reflect the impact of the
economic, political and technological shifts of the last decade,
added new material
on corporate citizenship and social responsibility, and
worked hard to make the book an even more compelling read.
You can find both the
hard cover and
digital editions on
Amazon or
Barnes & Noble.

Reframing Academic Leadership

My
book with Joan Gallos,
Reframing Academic Leadership (Jossey-Bass), is
available in both hardbound and digital format. Click for
Amazon,
Kindle,
Barnes & Noble
or
Nookbook.
Many college and
university administrators have told us they found it a readable, intellectually provocative,
and pragmatic guide to leadership in the academy.